Stanford strengthens research component of overseas study

STANFORD -- Stanford senior Dianne Newman saw a lot of museums during her
time overseas.

None fascinated her more, though, than eastern Berlin's Pergamon Museum -
a German time capsule, virtually unchanged since the 1930s, containing
treasures from ancient Greece and Rome

Many of the Pergamon displays, including massive architectural reliefs
depicting battles of ancient gods and giants, "are direct links to Hitler's
time," said Newman, a German studies major. "The emphasis is on the emotional
impact of the objects."

Newman took classes at Stanford's overseas study center in Berlin, did an
internship at the Pergamon, then traveled to Greece and Turkey to see where
many of the museum's artifacts were excavated. She is now hard at work on a
senior honors thesis, based on her experiences and travels.

Ten years ago, Newman's effort at original overseas research would have
been unusual for an undergraduate. No more.

"We're poised at a point where we could have really significant numbers of
undergraduates doing original research with important scholars overseas,"
said Janet Schmidt, assistant director for academic programs in the Overseas
Studies office.

"Students are coming back and finishing honors theses unlike any others in
the country, based on archives that no other undergraduate has explored. This
program has unlimited potential."

Stanford has been working successfully in recent years to encourage
undergraduate research, both at home and abroad, as a way of linking the
young students more closely to the research interests of the university
faculty.

Laura Selznick, director of Stanford's Undergraduate Research
Opportunities office, meets regularly with foreign-bound students to
encourage them to think about thesis topics before they leave. She also
provides information about grants, offered by private donors, to help them
pay for research-related expenses.

Last year, her office awarded 12 grants for undergraduate overseas
projects, ranging from a history student's study of men in the British
suffrage movement to an English honors thesis on the subversive poetry of
concentration camp survivors.

Geoffrey Goldman, an international relations major, received a grant to
study the interaction between the European Court of Justice at The Hague and
national courts in the European Community.

"I traveled to England, Brussels and Luxembourg and interviewed practicing
lawyers, as well as some EC officials," he said. "It was a interesting time
to be doing research there."

Projects in other parts of the world included a study of student activism
in Hong Kong, an environmental project on the rain forest in Costa Rica, and
an artistic study of urban and rural life in Thailand.

"Students love the idea of having control over part of their education,"
Selznick said. "They also like being able to extend an academic interest over
more than one quarter. And the experience of framing questions and writing up
the results is a wonderful kind of credential."

In the future, Overseas Studies planners hope to encourage even more
independent study through the establishment of "research modules" that would
provide a home base for students pursuing overseas research with faculty at
Stanford or abroad.

This winter, for example, students who have completed introductory classes
at Stanford's center in Santiago may choose to do further work at a research
module on South American e_cology policy under the direction of Chilean
biologist Ernesto Hajek, or they may choose to study the political economy of
higher education under Chilean social scientist Jose Joaquin Brunner.

Another research module, which may open in winter 1993-94 in Mexico, would
focus on issues of North American economic and cultural integration.

"The ideal trajectory would be for a Stanford student to take preparatory
courses here, attend classes at Santiago in the autumn and do research at the
modules in Santiago or Mexico in the winter," said Russell Berman, director
of Overseas Studies. "Then that student could come back well prepared for
work on an honors thesis."

Once the Stanford center in Moscow is established, he said, other research
modules may be set up in Krakow, Vienna or possibly in one of the outlying
former Soviet republics.

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